From time to time, I will provide book reviews in this blog, of what I’ve recently read. It will keep me sharp as I read, and maybe hone skills as a reviewer, especially of how to be honest but not insulting. Of course, blog readers will then see that a lot of what I read is ancient.

This first one is reasonably new Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You To Know About by Kevin Trudeau. Like many, I had seen bits and snatches of his info-mercials, though I never watched one all the way through. Much of what I heard him say made sense, and the entire concept of natural curse simply by using things that God gave us, rather than relying on man’s manufacturing, is attractive to me. I remember reading <url=”http://books.google.com/books?id=YqV27LGcZGMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:Jean+inauthor:Carper&sig=grfd6-2KKyYNDTK5jYzzpPlt_Hw”>Food-Your Miracle Medicine by Jean Carper some years ago, and being impressed with the whole concept of natural cures. I had been intending to purchase Trudeau’s two main books, but my brother-in-law beat me to it, giving them as Christmas presents last month.

Unfortuately, the first book is awful. I hate to say that so bluntly, but it is. If I had the time and a bit more of a masochistic bent, I would go through the book with highlighters and highlight: health suggestions, anti-government ranting, anti-corporate ranting, self-aggrandizement, and information rebeated either verbatim or almost so. The health information would be less than 2 percent of the book, anti-government rants about 15 percent, anti-corporate rants about 20 percent, self-aggrandizement maybe 5 percent, with the rest (whatever that comes to) being awful, awful repetition. If the repetition percent comes out to less than 60 percent, I’ve given too much weight to other things.

This is sad, because I suspect most of what he says concerning health is quite valid. Eat foods in their most natural, organic state, without the benefits of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, genetic modification, homogenization, pasteurization, etc. But wading through the awful repetition is so difficult, I don’t know how to really benefit from this book.

The beefs I have with Trudeau are the same ones I have with most health books.
1. While all organic food would obviously seem to be better, a modern, urban society, with the distance from farm to market to table results in so much spoilage that full organic is not possible in massive quantities. So only the informed few could benefit from this.
2. The organic and natural way of eating is much more expensive than what we find now in stores. Thus the poor cannot really afford to participate. Only those with land and the wherewithall to organic farm, or those with sufficient means, can participate.
3. The book itself is poorly written, as I find most health books to be. Trudeau needs a ghost writer and an editor who will be honest with him. The 400+ page book could have been done in 50 pages with no loss of information.
4. The book is not so much for conveying true health information as it is a teaser, published to take you through a portal into a world of other for-profit products. Most of these health books are really for the purpose of selling food supplements. Trudeau’s is for selling website and newsletter subscriptions. Some difference.

I have read a little in Trudeau’s second book, More Natural Cures Revealed, but will not be reviewing it. To do so will be redundant.